What About the Thief?

I promised Friday that I was going to stop blogging about the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ this week, but, then I touched on the (in)famous thief on the cross on Friday, and realized that that topic alone deserved more discussion than I could possibly include in that post, so, once more, but tomorrow, something completely different, I promise.
Luke 23:39-43 gives the account, although Luke is apparently less convinced than Matthew that the individual involved was a thief, he uses the more generic term, malefactor. Basically, the story is this: at the crucifixion, Jesus and two others that had also been condemned to death. At first, the other two mocked Jesus, knowing that He had claimed to be the Messiah, and believing that God would not allow something this horrific to happen to His Messiah. Sometime during the crucifixion, though, one of the men had a fit of conscience, and defended Jesus, realizing that He didn’t deserve the same fate.
Where did this attack of conscience come from? Did this man, knowing that he was going to die, suddenly decide that he wanted to do something noble? Perhaps he thought history would remember him more favorably than the other… I can’t help but think that this was something more along the lines of Matthew 16:13-17, where Jesus asked the disciples who He was, and Peter told Him; leading Jesus to say that flesh and blood had not revealed it to Peter, but the Father. I’m not sure what the thief on the cross prayed, but it seems to me that whatever it was, led the Father to reveal to him that salvation was on the next cross over.
Now, a lot of people theorize that since the thief on the cross clearly believed in his heart, and confessed with his mouth, just as we are told to do in Romans 10:9, that it proves that belief and confession are all that is required for salvation. I have blogged before salvation being more complicated than that. Let us consider for a moment that this was a pretty extreme situation. For one thing, Christianity was a fairly new idea. Jesus’ followers weren’t even known as Christians yet. How many opportunities did the thief have to accept Jesus as his personal savior prior to finding himself dying right next to Him? Further, we know that the thief was a sinner (aren’t we all?); he wasn’t being crucified as a follower of Jesus. Now we have been taught that baptism is for the remission of sins (Luke 3:3, Acts 2:38). Obviously, the thief didn’t climb down off of his cross, get baptized, and then get back on his cross, but it’s equally obvious that he had the kind of sin in his life that would have kept him out of Heaven, so what happened? Surely Jesus knew what kind of man He was talking to… In Luke 5:24 (and Matthew 9:6, and Mark 2:10), Jesus demonstrates that He has the power on earth to forgive sins.
Further, in the book of Romans (often referred to as the book of salvation), Apostle Paul explains to us the mechanism of baptism: When we are baptized into Christ, we are baptized into His death, the body of sin is destroyed, for he that is dead is freed from sin. In other words, our baptism represents the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The thief didn’t have to go through a rite representative of dying with Christ, he literally died with Christ.
How many of us can say, honestly, that the first time we ever had the opportunity to accept Jesus was when we were in the process of already dying, that we were dying with Him, and that He personally forgave our sins? Not too many, I would think. Yet, I have heard an awful lot of people use the thief on the cross as an excuse not to get baptized. I don’t think God likes excuses (I’ve certainly never gotten a warm, fuzzy feeling when I have tried to use one on Him). The Bible also tells us that (in James 4:17), to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. So, while the thief on the cross clearly didn’t need to be baptized, the rest of us do; not only would it be a sin to not get baptized, given the opportunity, but we would still face every other sin that we ever committed in judgment…
By the way, one other thing, in John 10:1, Jesus said that if anyone comes up any other way, the same is a thief and a robber. Now I have sometimes wondered if He didn’t say that, knowing that there would be a thief that would end up in Heaven by a little bit different route than the rest of us. Really, though, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, so the thief did make it to Heaven by the same Way. Really, though, too, if you read John 10, Jesus isn’t talking about getting to Heaven some other way, He’s talking about someone coming into the sheepfold (the church) pretending to be the Shepherd, and that’s a whole different situation.

A Recipe for Success as a Christian

Let’s suppose for a moment, that I were baking a cake, and I asked you to go to the store for me and pick up some eggs, buttermilk, heavy cream, and a pound of Callebaut chocolate, would you then assume that those ingredients are all that goes into a cake? Probably not, in fact, you probably have a pretty good idea, that some of those ingredients I don’t actually need to make a cake, I just need those for this particular recipe. What if I asked you for all-purpose flour, baking powder, vegetable oil, and vanilla? I might be able to make a cake with those ingredients, but it probably wouldn’t be very tasty. More likely, though, you would realize that I already had most of the ingredients I needed for the recipe that I was using. (By the way, I don’t carry around cake recipes in my head, the one that I used for this illustration can be found here.)
Sometimes people get hung up on the idea that in various places in the gospels, Jesus told one person that they had to one thing to be saved, but told another to do something else. Keep in mind that Jesus knew what state each of those people were in. He knew, so to speak, which individuals had flour, milk, eggs, vanilla, baking powder, or vegetable oil. He was telling them what they needed, and, in some cases, He was telling them one thing, knowing that it would lead to other things. In Luke 7, there is a beautiful story about Jesus being invited to dinner at the home of a Pharisee named Simon, but, a woman, whom Simon didn’t approve of, followed Jesus in. After some discussion, Jesus tells the woman that her faith has saved her. In Luke 8:12, Jesus, in explaining the parable of the sower, says that the wayside represents people that hear the Word, but don’t accept it, lest they “…believe and be saved,” which would imply that belief is the only ingredient of salvation. That doesn’t necessarily follow, although if one truly believes, there will be other actions that follow from that belief. John 10:9 makes it clear that Jesus is the only way to be saved, but He doesn’t really talk about how to be saved, just that He is the way. Now, in Matthew 10:22, Matthew 24:13, and Mark 13:13, Jesus says that one must endure to the end to be saved. Endure what? Well, reading Matthew 24 and Mark 13, we see that Jesus talks a lot about His followers being persecuted. We have a bad tendency to think that because we live in a country that is predominantly Christian, that was founded on Christian principles, where freedom of religion is the law of the land, that we will never have to endure persecution, but there are those around us who won’t like us living a Christian life, and will give us problems (certainly not to the extent that the early church had problems, but still). Now, Mark 16:16 says, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” Now, some people look at that and say, “Oh, but it doesn’t say that he that is not baptized is damned,” but, again, that’s part of a recipe.
In Romans 8:24, Paul tells us that we are saved by hope. Is hope better than faith? Or does hope lead to faith? In Romans 10:9, Paul says, “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.” Now Jesus never said anything about confessing Him, should we then ignore what Jesus said and just go by what Paul said? Of course not, but neither should we ignore Paul, either.
What we definitely don't want to do is try to live by part of the Scripture, and ignore the rest. This is not a cafeteria. although I think we all have a tendency to be cafeteria Christians.

I Don't Like That

I was talking to a friend of mine recently, and the phrase, "I don't like that," kept coming up. We talked about videotaping police interrogations, and he said, "I don't like that. They could turn the camera off, beat the crap out of the suspect, and then when he was ready to confess, turn the camera back on. I don't like that." My response was, of course, "As opposed to the old fashioned way, where they just the crap out of the suspect, and there was no videotape?" Then we got on the subject of Doctor Phil. "I don't like him. Sometimes he yells at people. I don't like that." Well, I'm sorry; sometimes people need to be yelled at. Now, I haven't seen that much of Doctor Phil, and I've never seen him yell at anybody, so I can't really judge whether he was justified or not when he did.

There are things that I don't like. I don't like paying income tax, for one thing, but, at the same time, I understand that our government needs funds in order to function. I don't like the fact that our government seems to be so dysfunctional. One thing in income tax law that I particularly don't like is that if I get a refund on the income tax that I paid last year, I am expected to include that in my earned income for this year, even though I actually earned that money last year, and the government just 'borrowed' that money for several months. I don't like that, but that's the law (The IRS actually sent me a 1099 for my refund last year).

My point is that just because you or I don't like something, that doesn't make it wrong. If I'm one of Doctor Phil's patients, and he yells at me, I probably won't like it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's wrong to yell at me. That may be the only way that he can get my attention, or it may be that I have frustrated him to the point where he loses his temper and starts yelling (that would make that yelling my fault, rather than his).

There are a lot of people that don't like what the Bible says, but that doesn't make the Bible any less right. If we tried to come up with a religious document that everybody agreed on, it would be real short--and it wouldn't mention God, because of the atheists. I've noticed that most people don't fault the Bible itself, but they will try to blame some person or organization: "The Catholic Church says that the Jews are going to Hell because they haven't accepted Jesus Christ. I don't like that." To be honest, I don't like it either; the Jews are God's chosen people and it seems to me that good Jews should have a place in Heaven, but, according to the Bible, Jesus said that He is the only way. There are some things in Roman Catholic doctrine that I believe should be questioned, but that particular point is Scripture: don't blame the Catholics for that. "I stopped going to that church, because they preach tithing." Again, tithing is Scriptural. Now, most of the references in the Bible about tithing are Old Testament, so some would say that we aren't required to tithe any more (we're under a New Covenant, we're not under the law, but under Grace, etc.), but it seems to me that if you allow yourself to be led by the Spirit, you will fulfill the works of the law (not because it's the law, but because the Spirit that's leading you is the same Spirit that dictated the law). In any case, the church depends on the tithes and offerings of its parishioners; just as our government needs tax dollars in order to function (or dysfunction), the church needs money to pay the mortgage, the phone bill, the light bill, and the salaries of the people who work for the church. Can you imagine trying to worship with a church that had no building (because there wasn't enough money in the collection plate to make the mortgage payment), no phones, no lights, no paid pastor? We want our church to have all these things, but we don't like having to pay for it.

There's an old story about a preacher who preached a sermon in which he said, "This church is going to crawl!" and the congregation cried out, "Amen, preacher, let it crawl!" He spent some time elaborating on that statement, describing the things that the church would do while it was crawling, and then went on, "This church is going to walk!" "Amen, preacher, let it walk!" He again elaborated, about how much more the church would do when it was walking, instead of crawling, and then went on, "This church is going to run!" "Amen, preacher, let it run!" He elaborated about how much more he felt the church was capable of, and then he said, "This church is going to fly!" The people were really excited, and cried out, "Amen, preacher, let it fly!" He elaborated some more about the great things that his church was capable of, and the he said, "But to do this, it's going to take money." "Amen, preacher, let it crawl!"